All posts filed under: Historical Maps

Historical Map: Proposed Detroit Rapid Transit System, c. 1920

November 14, 2016
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A handsome aerial “birds-eye” rendering of a proposed elevated rapid transit system linking Detroit with Royal Oak, Birmingham, Pontiac and Rochester (as well as the Ford Motor Company plant and blast furnaces). The system was first proposed in 1915, with a working scale model presented to the Detroit city council (photo).  But by 1922, the company was still searching for land on which to erect one mile of test track for their unusual proprietary track system, […]

Historical Map: History of the London Underground’s Northern Line (to c. 1975)

November 10, 2016
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A map showing dates of openings (and closings) for stations and segments of track along the Northern Line. King William Street station was the short-lived northern terminus of the then-City & South London Railway (C&SLR) from 1890-1900. Via: Transport for London Tumblr

Historical (Unofficial?) Map: Transit of Sofia, Bulgaria, 2009

November 9, 2016
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Well, this is a bit of a mess, isn’t it? It looks like the map’s designers have attempted to represent the network isometrically, with the city’s grand avenues surrounding the historical central core. However, the whole thing’s just so darn busy that the attempted illusion just doesn’t work. Almost every part of the map is filled with something: labels, logos, clip art, photos of landmarks, even randomly-placed pictures of trams! I’m guessing that the map […]

Historical Map: Budapest Metro Map, c. 1980s

October 28, 2016
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A charmingly simple – almost naive – diagram of Budapest’s then three-line Metro as included in a fold-out city map brochure. The rippling water pattern for the rivers is rather lovely, as is the simple but effective three-circle depiction of the main interchange at Deák tér.  The use of large train and ferry icons to depict transportation interchanges is a little vague: the icons are large enough to span between some stations, or are placed […]

Historical Map: Hand-drawn fare zone London Underground Map by Phil Roe, c. 1977

October 14, 2016
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Phil Roe is a London Underground employee with over 40 years of service. While working in ticket offices in the 1970s, he was worried that he was too slow in calculating fares for customers, so he drew up his own fare zone diagrams for each station he worked at. The example below is for Green Park station, and the fares are in pence!  His maps predate the official usage of zones on the Tube Map, […]

Historical Map: French SNCF Rail Network, 1976 by Rudi Meyer

October 10, 2016
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Via long-time correspondent and fellow map-maker Andrew Smithers (check out his Project Mapping website if you haven’t done it yet!) comes this superb diagram of mainline rail services in 1976 France. It was created by famed Swiss designer Rudi Meyer, who was also responsible for the original – and very distinctive – Paris RER map in 1977-1978. The map is certainly very striking, using a bold blue and green colour palette and minimal distractions from […]

Submission – Idealised Edinburgh Tramways Map, c.1940s by Andy Arthur

September 13, 2016
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Submitted by Andy, who says: Hi, I recently got a bit over-fascinated and nostalgic about the old tramways network of Edinburgh and decided it would be fun to plot out a schematic routemap of the old system as it never quite was at some point in the late 1940s. I also had a little bit of fun trying to make it look like it just might have come out of the Corporation Tramways Department, even […]

Historical Map: “Futuroute” Route Selector for Picc-Vic Rail Project, Manchester, 1970s

August 24, 2016
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Everything about this rather fabulous mechanical route selector – a unique piece created to build interest and publicity for the eventually-cancelled rail project – just screams early 1970s modernist design. From the gaudily coloured stripes on the case, to the tightly-spaced sans serif typeface, to the very name itself: “Futuroute” – literally the route for the future! Although I keep wanting to pronounce it as “futuro-route” rather than the intended “futu-route” for some reason… The unit is now […]

Historical Map: New York City IND Subway Planning Map, 1927

August 23, 2016
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Via: hyperrealcartography: New York City IND Subway planning map from 1927. I don’t have any information about this map other than what’s on it but it appears to be an early version of the Independent Subway System which was built by the City of New York to force the existing private subway companies to sell their lines to the city (”recaptured” as is labeled on the key) .  The plan clearly shows the first section […]

Project: Streetcars and Electric Railways in Portland, 1920

July 31, 2016
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It's safe to say that I'm fascinated with the rich transit history of my adopted hometown of Portland, Oregon, and it's certainly something that I've explored before. This new project started out with a very simple goal – to produce a route map of Portland streetcars at their zenith in 1920 that showed each line separately – but it quickly grew into something much more.